Peking: An Epic Novel of Twentieth-Century China

Acclaimed by the Financial Times as “an excellent read, panoramic in scope,” Peking brings to life the conflict, struggle, and idealism that marked China’s revolution and led to its rise to superpower status
To a China racked by famine and bloody civil war in 1931, young English-born missionary Jakob Kellner brings all the crusading passion of his untried Christian faith. He burns to save the world’s largest nation from Communism. But on the cold, unforgiving Long March, amid horror and despair too great for Christianity to salve, Jakob becomes entangled with Mei-ling, a beautiful and fervent revolutionary. Powerful new emotions challenge and reshape his faith—and entrap him for life in the vast country’s tortured destiny.
Once held hostage by Red Guards in Peking for more than two years, author Anthony Grey crafts a portrait of China as a land of great beauty and harshness, of triumph and tragedy, as he traces the path of China’s Communist party from its covert inception through purge and revolution in an epic novel that enhances the reader’s understanding of modern China.